English and Hindi poetry and prose, published as well as experimental. Book reviews, essays, translations, my views about the world and world literature, religion, politics economics and India. Formerly titled "random thoughts of a chaotic being" (2004-2013).

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

She remembers it all, the trifles and triviaand ranks among the best of the intelligesia.Your every opinion is subject to her scrutiny,for she knows of each pact, knows each mutiny.

She demands equality of body and spiritand has thousand citations in her ambitOn chessboard of life, she's mastered all gambitsand will win without fail, for she never submits.

She cares not about your desires and dreams,she's got her own ends and own trusted means.She was trained not to be easily satisfied,and at nothing less than best is she gratified.

She mulls in moods, she calls personal freedom,and tests, the ideals of inducing you into serfdom.Her eyelashes obey the planned ploys of her heart,She speaks in puns. With satire her phrases, start.

She loves your praise, lusts for your soul too,and dismisses your passions as unpure, untrue.What can satisfy her is the hardest to possess,an Einstein head and a Hercules in undress.

She contrasts your each word with the best ever spoken,and unaccomplished feats are counted as promises broken.You are thought as spineless, your existance - vain,if for her, you relinquish nothing, can't adapt or abstain.

Each act is judged against the influence of family historyand your present is scaled by what it offers to posterity.Even bestial desires in her are tamed by a metaphysical fervor,or the higher good of humanity maybe required to get her favor.

She can sweep you off your feet, and has charms to mystify you,she can work magic with words, and if the need be, glorify you.She will manage your life and accounts to perfection,no nothing can ever escape, her erudite attention.

By her very nature, she will always be a control freakand tell you mind your own business in either Latin or GreekShe can love, but her love will compete with her reason,your every emotional upheavel will arouse her derision.

She will be by your side, but fear of her leaving will remain,for she will never show, whatever she suffers in her big brainMaybe poetry, a prized possession or even a source of inspirationwhat she makes of you, show if you really deserve her admiration.

To love her true, tease her with Wilde wit, though polished,and be your sincere self, consciously smart, throughly poised,loving an intelligent girl is a challenge even for the articulate,and to win her her requires more than this poet can even postulate.

Revised on 31 Oct, 2005

Previous version was written on 15 Mar, 2005.I have changed the ending, and formatting, as well as few words here and there:)The old post is available here:http://sharmavivek.sulekha.com/blog/post/2005/03/loving-an-intelligent-girl.htmLoving an intelligent woman has remained equally challenging, though I think I have turned wiser with experience:)

Sunday, October 15, 2006

The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene is a delightful read, both because of the simplicity of the language and honesty of the tale. Scobie is a middle aged Police Deputy Commissioner, obsessively sincere to his duty, and particularly useless to his book reading wife Louise. The tale is set in a West African colony, where it rains for six months, and apart from loneliness, bugs, roaches, malaria and third world struggles oppress the few white men who reside in the colony. Wilson appears in the colony and takes a liking to Louise. Before he can get anywhere, she leaves for South Africa.

A plot of circumstances makes Scobie's life a mesh where he needs to be the friend of very Yusef he despises and fall in love with twenty years younger, Mrs Rolt, or Helen. By the time his wife decides to return, he is tangled in a desperate struggle between two women, good and bad, his principles and everything he must do to compromise them, and the story proceeds into a realm of beautiful tragedy, leaving the reader spellbound.

There are few most memorable chapters in the novel. One is the description of a game Wilson and Harris invent and play, where they compete to hunt roaches. Other is the last one, where the Heart of Matter leaves you stunned and silenced in its sincere description for how little people matter once they are dead.

There are many sentences that I invariably will remember for a long time. Examples: 1) Virtue, the good life, tempted him in the dark like a sin. 2) Men become twins with age: the past was their common womb: the six months of rain and the six months of sun was the period of their common gestation. They needed only a few words and a few gestures to convey their meaning. 3)The word "pity" is used as loosely as the word "love": the terrible promiscuous passion which so few experience. 4) He listened with the intense interest one feels in a stranger's life, the interest the young mistake for love. AND LAST, but not the least 5) 'Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamonds: the warm heart has no value and is thrown away.'

You can watch Dilip Kumar dance as Rafi sings this Shakeel Badayuni song in Naushad's music and cinematorgraphy by Babasaheb, direction of Nitin bose (more about movie itself at http://www.upperstall.com/films/gangajamuna.html )

The Video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSi70Isxkow

(I wish I could translate better. I hope it provides some flavor of the song to people who cannot understand the Hindi lyrics used in this song).

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James sketches the account of life and times of most memorable heroine Isabel Archer. Isabel leaves US and arrives in England with her Aunt. Her cousin, Ralph, who ails from tuberculosis takes active interest in her, and Henry James creates highly realistic and entertaining conversations, which shed light into the character and thoughts of both these characters and the uncle and the aunt. The story gets interesting with presence of two suitors, each highly successful in their respective country (US and UK). The dying uncle leaves his neice a fortune, and she finds herself independent enough to pursue her whims and life.

Her marriage to Gilbert Osmond, the events that lead to it and how Isabel comes of age is the reason why Portrait of a Lady is a must read novel for every person. After denying two apt and deserving suitors, Isabel ventures to make a tragic choice and the intricate interplay of her perception or rather lack of it with the circumstances and events makes novel a masterpiece. The strains between the Old Europe and New America, the idiosyncracies associated with each come to fore, both through Isabel's life and through that of her journalist friend's, Henrietta Stackpole's.

Be it plain Pansy, the perfectionist Madame Merle, the cold and practical Aunt, the socialite Countess Gemini, each woman, like Isabel, is portrayed in sufficent detail. The two suitors engage as character studies, while the cousin Ralph is the character that shall stay with me forever. Admirable even in adverse circumstances, he is for me besides Isabel, the greatest creation of Henry James.

The story could have become melodramatic, but that is highly understated. The dialogues could have filled it to make it like screenplay, but James supplies nice descriptions of both the physical world and that of what goes in Isabel's heart to make it substantial. The commentaries on love and marriage that are subtly built into the novel, and the picture of both US and Europe seem quite contemporary. For a novel written in 1881, it shows how acute the observations of the author were, as well as the fact that we, humans, live life with similar choices, mistakes and feelings irrespective of the age. The novel has enough element of suspense, and events unfold in unexpected ways, making each discovery a pleasant or unpleasant surprise.

Having read many bleak American novels, this Henry James novel allows one to see how a Jane Austen type entertainer can be generated with sufficient origanility by a masterful writer. I am spellbound by the analogies in many of the most memorable actresses, espicially in how they make their choices between men.

Four excerpts from novel shows one the essence of the book:

"Justice to a lovely being is after all a florid sort of sentiment."

"She had had a more wondrous vision of him, fed though charmed senses and oh such stirred fancy!- she had not read him right. A certain combination of features had touched her, and in them she had seen most striking of figures. That he was poor and lonely and yet that somehow he was noble- that was what had interested her and seemed to give her her opportunity. There had been an undefinable beauty about him - in his situation, in his mind, in his face. She had felt the same time that he was helpless and ineffectual, but the feeling had taken a form of tenderness which was very flower of respect."

"It was not till the first year of their life together, so admirably intimate at first, had closed she had taken the alarm. Then the shadows had begun to gather; it was as if Osmond delibrately, almost malignantly, had put the lights out one by one."

"How could anything be a pleasure to a woman who knew that she had thrown away her life?"

Vivek is a published poet. He reads & writes in Hindi and English. His poetry and essays in English are published in Poetry, Atlanta Review, The Cortland Review, Kartika
Review, Bateau, Muse India, Reading Hour, etc. He contributes columns and verses to Divya
Himachal (Hindi newspaper in India). Vivek's first collection, "Saga of a Crumpled Piece of
Paper" (63 poems, English, Writers
Workshop, Calcutta) was published in 2009.

Vivek spend his childhood in Himachal Pradesh and undergraduate years in IIT Delhi. He pursued a doctoral degree at Georgia
Tech, Atlanta (2003-2008) and he was a postdoctoral research associate in
Mechanical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge (MA) (2008-2012). He currently resides in Chicago.